I’ve learned recently that its better to tell people that I might do something or that maybe I will be going to this. You get better feedback this way. Rather, you actually get feedback this way because it creates an opening for it. People are reluctant to speak their feelings when its clear that you’ve made up your mind already.

It calls to mind a remark by William Tecumsah Sherman, who once told a friend he never gave reasons for what he thought until he absolutely had to. Because after a while, a new and better reason would pop into his head and he’d want to use that instead.

It’s what Polonius told Laertes in Hamlet. Keep your thoughts to yourself, he said, and “take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgement.”

Part of strong opinions, loosely held is side-stepping the tendency to reify. There is no need to amplify your intentions by repeating them as certainties. By wording things as contingencies, I feel that I am to make room for change based on the facts as they come. To set things up literally as only possibilities, but mentally as assumptions. Function follows form, as some say, and this is the proper form.

What this means presenting externally the signs of ambivalence, while beneath, know firmly what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Because, with the exception of special circumstances, people who seem sure of themselves and their future are threatening. On the outside, be like everyone else: indolent and unsure and drifting. On the inside: none of these things.